Patients can be the smoke alarms of the NHS

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Public reports of care by users, not more regulation, will prevent disasters such as Stafford

Jeremy Hunt is about to receive an unwelcome new year’s present. When the
report by Robert Francis, QC, into appalling care at Stafford Hospital lands
on the Health Secretary’s desk he will be under enormous pressure to act. He
should think twice before he does.

During my time in the health hot seat I received my fair share of similar
reports into quality failures. It seems that every decade one part of the
NHS suffers a meltdown in standards: the Birmingham Children’s Hospital in
the 1980s, the Bristol heart babies in the 1990s, the Shipman murders in the
2000s. Like